Today we take a break from all the depressing and rather frustrating political news to bring you a little bit of whimsy.

This article from Wikipedia is an excellent spark for debate on our two-party system.

Today we bring you an excellent article from Aaron Nye on Helium.com. where he posits some very interesting and very true facts about modern secondary education.

Here's a snippet from Mr. Nye's article:

It seems that people these days are content to watch "American Idol" and "Entertainment Tonight" on television rather than actually learn anything. Most folks have forgotten (or more to the point, never knew) what learning is. Critical thinking has gone, like so many other invaluable skills, the way of the do-do. In ancient Greece, universities were not the classroom style, rote memorization facilities of indoctrination of today. Indeed, they were far from what passes for modern education. They actually taught people the skill of philosophy.

Trust me when I say that this article will definitely get you thinking about the state of modern education.

First, just let me say hello again, and, mea culpa for the extended absence. There's been some rather "interesting" personal stuff going on on the Professor's homestead. I'd also like to thank Mr. Blogins for the the post a couple of weeks ago. Having said all that, lets get back to the show.

In the future, when we start to mass-produce designer CLONES, The Dow/M3/GM/Time-Warner/Haliburton mega-conglomerate known as UltraCorp will need a jingle for their lovable, oh-so hugable (yet,eerily familiar) products. I think Nellie McKay's got it ready to go:

And speaking of Oil prices.

From ScrappleFace:

When the U.S. Supreme Court reconvenes on the first Monday in October, the nine Justices may consider whether the Constitutional preamble clause “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” guarantees an individual right to drill for oil.

More here.

Here's a question for all you folks out on the tubes: If you own a piece of property, do you have the right to drill for oil on your property, or for that matter do anything you please with that property? If so, why?

Did you know that 650,000 minors get alcohol from their parents? Sweet zombie Jesus! God forbid parents responsibly introduce alcohol to their own children at an age they think it's proper to do so.

We wouldn't want any responsible drinkers running around the streets, now would we?
Besides, what would the media and politicians have to bitch about? Guns? Oil prices? The price of tea in China? Okay, so they'd still have a lot to piss and moan about, but, you get my point.

And here we have a sensible article from Time magazine about drinking with your kids and doing it responsibly.

Here's a little snippet:

Today news stories offer grim accounts of high school parties that end in gruesome wrecks and of college kids killing themselves by consuming, say, 100 shots in as many minutes. Last year the Surgeon General issued a "call to action" to prevent underage drinking; the National Institutes of Health issued a similar one in 2002.

The calls to action make it sound as if America's high schools have become one enormous kegger, but in fact alcohol use among high school students has fallen dramatically. The Monitoring the Future surveys conducted by the University of Michigan show that in 1991, 81% of eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders had had at least one drink in their lives; by last year, the figure was only 58%. Roughly 47% of this cohort had been drunk at least once in 1991; in 2007 only 38% had ever been drunk. On college campuses, meanwhile, the ranks of nondrinkers are rising steadily. In 1980 only 18% of college students surveyed for Monitoring the Future said they had not had a drink in the past month; by 2006 the proportion had risen to 35%.

And yet the typical college president can offer sad anecdotes about students dead from alcohol poisoning. Those deaths are still so rare that it's impossible to prove they are increasing. But according to Henry Wechsler of the Harvard School of Public Health, 26% of college kids who drink say they have forgotten where they were or what they did at least once; the figure was 18% for college men in the late 1940s, according to the seminal 1953 book Drinking in College. We think of the midcentury as a gin-soaked era, but when the Drinking in College authors asked students whether they had suffered an "accident or injury" as a result of alcohol (without defining precisely whether that meant only physical injury or also alcohol poisoning), only 6% of drinkers said they had. The figure has now more than doubled, to 13%.

So the data indicate there are fewer young drinkers, but a greater proportion of them are hard-core drinkers. Parents have helped create this paradox. Many parents seem torn between two competing impulses: officially, most say in surveys that they oppose any drinking by those under 21. But unofficially many also seem to think kids will be kids--after all, not so long ago, they were themselves drinking as teens. A few of these parents have even allowed their kids to have big drunken parties at home.

But there is a better way. At first it sounds a little nutty, but you might consider drinking with your kids. Incongruously, the way to produce fewer problem drinkers is to create more drinkers overall--that is, to begin to create a culture in which alcohol is not an alluring risk but part of quotidian family life. Of course, that's a mostly European approach to alcohol, but there's reason to think it could work here. And it may be the best way to solve the binge-drinking problem.

*Okay, so it was a large snippet. So sue me.

And you probably shouldn't open this in front of your kids either.

Today we see the Supreme Court finally admit that the second amendment is an individual right along with the rest of the bill of rights. So all of you gun nuts (I'm one too) rejoice.

Although I feel kind of bad for the poor gun control advocates. Their logic may have been flawed and they may have used emotional manipulation to get their favorite pieces of legislation passed, but dammit, they're nice decent people...........Aah, who am I kidding? A gun control advocate is just like any other power hungry, megalomaniac out there.

And the arguments have been the same for god knows how long. Don't you guy's think maybe you should change up your reasoning a little.

These are getting old:

• Guns kill people - Guns don't kill people. A gun can't fire itself or load itself. A gun is a tool like so many other things and like so many other thing can be used for good or ill. So strike one for one of the many pieces of flawed logic by gun control advocates.

• The second amendment is a collective right - First of all, rights can not be collective in nature, two people don't have more rights than one person. Secondly, the second amendment

  A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms,(emphasis is mine) shall not be infringed

  clearly states the individuality of the right to keep and bear arms.
  

and

• It'll lower crime rates - The fact of the matter is that communities that have a high gun ownership rate are usually much safer than those that do not. Think about it. What criminal is going to try and rob or rape someone who's packing heat and knows (presumably) how to use it? Criminals have a tendency to go after easy marks, those they perceive to be weak or timid. Also, gun control laws only really affect law abiding citizens. They don't prevent criminals from getting guns. Criminals will just go to a black market gun dealer

And here we have some of what the gun control nuts at the NY Times would like you to believe:

Thirty-thousand Americans are killed by guns every year — on the job, walking to school, at the shopping mall. The Supreme Court on Thursday all but ensured that even more Americans will die senselessly with its wrongheaded and dangerous ruling striking down key parts of the District of Columbia’s gun-control law.

In a radical break from 70 years of Supreme Court precedent, Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, declared that the Second Amendment guarantees individuals the right to bear arms for nonmilitary uses, even though the amendment clearly links the right to service in a “militia.” The ruling will give gun-rights advocates a powerful new legal tool to try to strike down gun-control laws across the nation.

This is a decision that will cost innocent lives, cause immeasurable pain and suffering and turn America into a more dangerous country. It will also diminish our standing in the world, sending yet another message that the United States values gun rights over human life.

More here.

And here is the landmark Supreme Court decision.

In honor and tribute to a legend of comedy and defender of the first amendment:









I didn't always agree with George Carlin's views, but I did always respect the man.
Some of his views on politics drove me absolutely insane, but he always made you think. And for that I am thankful.

Now I know this is probably the point where I'm supposed to say something like, "He's in a better place now". But, if his stand up material on the matter is any indication, I don't think he'd very much like that if he were alive.

Mr. Carlin is dead. And there is nothing worse in the world for a family member or friend to go through than to lose a loved one. We all have had or will have that experience one day. And it is my greatest hope that each and every one of you take some comfort in the fact that your lost loved ones lived their lives to the fullest extent they could.

My sincerest condolences go out to Mr. Carlin's family and friends.

note: This probably isn't the best I could do, but, this is the best I've got.